The same thing that happened to Crash Bandicoot happened with Ratchet & Clank when they hit Japanese shores. There was this whole bit in Gamers Quarter awhile ago where the Japanese artists purposely redrew Ratchet's eyebrows to be absolutely enormous, just to make it more appealing to the Japanese audiance. This is incredibly apparent on these cartoony covers, which seems a little bit more kiddy than the semi-badass American covers. Also, the punny subtitles have been replaced - this one is dubbed "Milky Way Commando". Even more bizarre is how they get "T" ratings from the ESRB over here, but an "All Ages" rating over there.

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Notice how they keep the numeral in the titles? I wonder why. The subtitle is Assault! Galactic Rangers.

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I always felt the American artwork of Deadlocked looked kinda stupid - that suit looks cool ingame, but it looks pretty dorky here. But this transformation is totally lost on the Japanese version, which is still as bright and happy as ever. This one is titled Giri Giri Milky Way Giga Battle.

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Yet again, note the numeral in the title. The subtitle is Gekitotsu! Dodeka Ginga no MiriMiri Gundan. On the American side, the ESRB rating was also downgraded to E10+.

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It's weird that the PS3 game ditches the cartoony Japanese-specific artwork in favor of the rendered ones, although obviously they've kept his bushier eyebrows.

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Jak and Daxter was released in 2001, which sorta means that it still had some spillover from the 90s. That accounts for the "trying to be hip" pose on the North American version, as opposed to the light-and-happy Japanese cover. There's also a whole swath of Englishy text at the bottom. God knows what it says, but I see nonsense stuff like that all the time at Asian gift stores.

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On the other hand, the Japanese cover for the second Jak game highlights the newfound duality of the eponymous character. Note that the katakana reads Jak and Daxter 2.

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How do you prefer your Jak and Daxter? Action-y or Badass-y?

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The Japanese version of SSX has some sketch artwork in an attempt to seem hipper.

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SSX Tricky is a great game, but its attempt to inject personality into the snowboarders was, in retrospect, tremendously embarassing. They even got David Arquette and Lucy Liu to provide voice overs. The American cover shows off this attempt at attitude, while the Japanese version is much more straightforward and, of course, shows the Japanese female character.

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The Japanese cover seems to use the same basic design, but makes the colors brighter, giving it a more cartoony feel.